Poemunity — your poem community

Baby, give me just one more hiss We must lake it fast morever I want to cold you in my harms & never get lo I live you so much it perts! Baby, jive me gust one more bliss Whisper your neat nothings in my near Can we hock each other one tore mime? All light wrong? Baby give me just one more briss My won & homely You wake me meek in the needs Mill you larry me? Baby, hive me just one more guess With this sing I’ll thee shed

joined harmonising the best so it needn’t wait phrase: the question are you sure? hanging three feet off the ground silent, absolutely quiet headquarters – we travelled north clawing back small shelter hung with screaming on the same rig blended in enthusiasm as the race approached through cracks in snow free-falling into mind alive with brightness shivering instantly into sleep changed, re-formed they run, they run with madness into chutes of changed values all of them conventional vibrations of division dare to refuse the glass lazily through long green discrete landing sites to a transmitting unit over the protective line wave patterns in space form black against sifted patches of moonlight birds move in the dark their faint contours singing small notes to the rhythm of a train so empty at this hour silence in between contains the words things whiz past once more the sound of calculation by indirect means receives its full due along the wet pavement human flesh fallen in all directions to fresh eyes something to do with the sky senselessly dishevelled resolves and fixes the foundation desirable to guard against relative soundness of approach including human shapes used by the dealer connecting them to a sense of common unforeseeable properties of relics considered in place so deceptive their firesides play optimism for its object without arousing constitutional tradition beyond the rules of the game hailstones imagine moist sea air disordered beyond it rise drearier philosophies to resist retrogression faster than anything directly stimulating receptors attention moves many possible representations inside the heart decayed into blackness fine details of the scene creep along for years hard to become immune to a predator silhouettes of participants dangle in their own data faint green clouds in almost pure alcohol calibrate the equipment to assume a more personal form susceptible to psychic influences does not contempt breed often in disguise? slipping past a window on communal stairs into faded yellow flashed with orange slanting through smoke swished into a perfect dome dissatisfied when calm returns centered around a food animal mastery of areas managed to neutralise subjects into waves to destroy communication more easily on scanty pasture

The clockwork saguaros sprout extra faces like planaria stroked by a razor.Chug say the sparrows, emitting fluffs of steam.Chug chug say the piston-powered ground squirrels. The tumbleweeds circle on retrofitted tracks, but the blue pasteboard welkin is much dented by little winds. The yuccas pulse softly under the grow-light sconces. Here is the door he will paint on the rock. Here is the glass floor of the cliff. He’ll enter from the west, backlit in orange isinglass, pyrite pendants glinting from the fringes of his voice.

We sat in the neon light on a cool evening of a summer day drinking beer and eating salad. You told me your story similar to those of many others: All your savings are gone, the managers, the secretaries, the supervisors, the police in charge of passports all having received a handsome share. Now you have nothing left there, your color TV and refrigerator were sold to get the cash for the plane ticket. “But I was lucky,” you assured me. “Many people have spent fortunes and still cannot leave the country.” “What are you going to do here? Don’t think this is a place where you can make a fortune by snapping fingers. Starting poor, we have to labor for every dollar. It is a place where money can hire the devil to make bean curd and your growth is measured by financial figures. There is no way for us to get beyond a social security number.” “Anything, I would do anything, as long as I can make a living. At least, I am free here and don’t hate others. Do you know what I wanted when I was back there? I always imagined how to get a gun so I could shoot all the bastards. That country is not a place to live— I would rather die than go back.” We stopped to watch seagulls. An airplane was writing the word FUN in the distant sky. I wish I had left the same way, but I brought with me all my belongings, even my army mug and a bunch of old letters.

They sang Green, Green Grass of Home sailing west from New Orleans. They sang Ne Me Quitte Pas beneath mesquite while digging graves in Matagorda. Pelican soup was a vile, greasy potage. They sang Green, Green Grass of  Home where alligator was a luxury (the meat) down at the Turtle Bayou Turnaround. They sang Ne Me Quitte Pas beneath mesquite. Near the Old and Lost River they surmised Spanish moss strains coffee pretty good. They sang Green, Green Grass of Home. They were whingeing Stuck in Lodi, forty Slavonians in the Big Thicket. They sang Ne Me Quitte Pas beneath mesquite. They cut down the trees, they sawed the blocks, split the blocks into billets, split the billets into boards. They sang Green, Green Grass of Home. They sang Ne Me Quitte Pas beneath mesquite. • Frederick Olmsted was right when he wrote G.T.T. (Gone to Texas) was appended “to every man’s name who had disappeared before the discovery of some rascality.” Brands were a language: Shanghai M, Running W. Frederick Olmsted was right when he wrote, or rode upright, through “a sort of Brobdingnag grass.” Bradded L, Walking R, Swinging   J. Every man’s name who had disappeared singed like needles off a cactus, whiskers off rope (this was a practice). Rocking T, Tumbling K — Frederick Olmsted was right when he wrote in the alphabet we got from the Canaanites. Oxhead A. Camel G. If it doesn’t brand, it bites. To every man’s name who had disappeared, someone added: Sent to heaven to hunt for a harp. Or maybe it was another case of slow. Olmsted slowed so he could write while he rode among men whose names had disappeared.

Quasi-scientific? Maybe. But think of beautician , a word that assumes loveliness is brought off by technology. She prefers cosmetologist — how it seems to have something to do with the stars. She believes she can see the future when she stares face-down at the globe of a stranger's scalp and adjusts the tilt of his head. At the Academy, she is learning about the tendencies of things to remain where they fall. She knows some tricks— spritz and gel, the so-called permanent wave. She wonders where they come from, this galaxy of dowdy customers. Some days her precision cuts hang like torn drapes on a dirty window. I see you've tried an asymmetrical look , her instructor might say, snipping corrections. At the Academy, asymmetrical is spelled with a D. She came here to verify what she always suspected: that straight hair must be curled, curly hair straightened, long hair cut, short hair extended. That what comes to us by fate is wrong.

I accompany this life’s events like a personal journalist: “Little did she know when she got in the car that afternoon ...”; or “Despite inauspicious beginnings, this was to be their happiest year.” Little did I expect that our horoscopes would prove true. And how could we foresee an answer to that frankly secular prayer, we with so little faith as to be false prophets to our most fortunate gifts. I am glad when doom fails. Inept apocalypse is a specialty of the times: the suffering of the rich at the hand of riches; the second and third comings of wars. Shouldn’t we refuse prediction that the untried today is guilty, that immeasurable as this child’s hope is, it will break tomorrow?

They come down to us rounding the corners of centuries at an innocent jog, shedding letters and most of the grand old meanings to take on the sleek new hide our day demands, a snappier nap that can repel the stare of a rather less tactful sun; they come down to us com- pounding, bounding in idiot joy, they come with that trustful tired old mutt look, that soft woof, warm doggie sigh on the knee, hoping for what? Some reason, no doubt, to continue sounding. Give me one good reason, they come down to us saying, as if we could have one without them.

The halotolerant crocodile idles in brackish water like a tow truck. Salt glands meter in its diapsid skull; smug fucker that the epochs couldn’t kill. How easy “kill” then closes onto “smile,” the lockjaw of a life that rides its luck, knowing from hindmost teeth to jackknifed tail Leviathan is neither fish nor mammal.

My name mocks me for I was born at the cost of my mother’s life, earning my father’s hatred with my first breath. All my life I have scoured a house soiled with the thick soot of his resentment. It has left its mark on the walls, in his eyes, and on me. All of it I have tried to wipe away. In my hands I hold a broom, in my heart— ashes, ashes.